nuts

«nuts» in Mova's school dictionary: hard-shelled fruits or seeds of some trees and plants… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (plural of nut: a nut, nuts); adjective (nuts, informal)

meaning for a pupil

1) Nuts are hard-shelled fruits or seeds of some trees and plants, like walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds; many can be eaten. tree →

2) Nuts are small metal pieces with a hole in the middle that screw onto bolts to hold things together. tree →

3) Nuts (informal) means crazy or silly: That idea is nuts! tree →

4) Nuts about something (informal) means liking it very much: nuts about football. tree →

sense in the lessons

In health and safety lessons: some people have a serious nut allergy, so many schools are nut-free; never share food with someone who has an allergy, and know they may carry an EpiPen. In science: squirrels bury nuts to eat in winter. In design and technology: nuts and bolts. Phrases: nut allergy, nut-free, nuts and bolts (the basic details), go nuts, nuts about.

examples

• Squirrels hide nuts for the winter. tree →
• Our school is nut-free because of allergies. tree →
• She is allergic to nuts. tree →
• Tighten the nuts on the bike wheel. tree →
• Almonds and hazelnuts are nuts. tree →
• He is nuts about dinosaurs. tree →
• The crowd went nuts when we scored. tree →
• Crack the nuts with a nutcracker. tree →
• These wishing nuts, after all, had proved true fortune-tellers. tree →

note

Singular: a nut. Trap: peanuts are not true nuts but legumes (like peas), and coconuts are not true nuts either, but they are still called nuts. Calling a person «nuts» is informal and can be unkind. Maths: «3 bags of 12 nuts» = 36 nuts.

In the corpora

• Wild chimpanzees make tools: they fish for termites with stripped twigs, crack nuts with stones and use leaves as sponges.
• Real squirrels bury nuts and forget many of them, so the nuts grow into new trees.
• Squirrels are rodents whose front teeth grow all the time, about fifteen centimetres a year, and gnawing hard nuts wears them down.
• Some crows in Japan drop nuts at pedestrian crossings for cars to crack and pick them up safely when the lights stop the traffic.
• Macadamia nuts can make dogs weak, wobbly and sick for a day or two, and nobody knows exactly why.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «nuts» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.